Inferno
by stardust-bones
Summary: My version of what happened to the painting. "It was so awful, the things that time both brought into the world with such wonderful happiness and the things it destroyed with such terrible hatred." Fire and Chiaki-centric. One-shot.


**AN: Okay, here's the beginning of my attempt at The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. I just finished watching the movie yesterday. And I loved it. The plotline was captivating, the characters heartwarming, and the conflict took my breath away. But there were some things that bothered me, mostly about the painting, so I'm writing this to clear it up.**

**Shout out to the people in my theatre class, because fob is a word and someday the Theatron will assemble.**

**Disclaimers: I own nothing, not even a copy of the movie.**

**So, without further ado, may I present the prologue!**

The heat of the fire was monstrous.

Flames curled about the surface of the painting like a swarm of angry bees, eating, devouring, and stinging all the while. The fire covered it with heat and warmth and pressure. It could not stand the hellish rage that the blaze ensued. So, it unwillingly gave in. After all that it had been through, to meet such an end as incineration. Hundreds of years it had rested proudly, untouched by the hands of time.

Time. Such an endless, infinite, uncontrollable malady. It was so awful, the things that time both brought into the world with such wonderful happiness and the things it destroyed with such terrible hatred.

While the portrait burned, the red-haired boy bound and gagged in the corner screamed silently. He longed for it with every part of his soul, but there was no saving it now.

It had been just his luck, his own rotten fault. He had left his house, even though it was illegal, sprinted like a maniac even though that, too, was illegal, and dove through the clouds of fog that covered the world, even though he should have been inside like a good kid would have.

But he didn't because the portrait had called to him, drawn him from under the covers. It was the only instance of peace in a time of eternal war.

Too bad the police thought that art should be banned and that happiness should be banned and the only acceptable punishment for a scoundrel such as Chiaki Mamiya was to be tied alone in an empty warehouse and watch the most glorious thing he'd ever seen burn slowly and painfully.

The brittle paper, once so clean and ivory, crumpled and blackened, curling over and joining its dead brethren: the fallen ashes of the logs. The canvas put up a fight for as long as it could, struggling to maintain its composure. It seemed to dissolve in an agonizingly beautiful array, the surviving bits and pieces bordered by gold floated with the currents of heavy smoke that clung fondly to the nighttime.

The lines blurred and melted into one another, all sense of direction lost, now a dizzying nest of smudge. The cinders that crumbled softly stole the picture's shape and size. The once bubbly and thick acrylic choked the flames and smeared its remnants on the wood that was soon consumed just as quickly. The color that had once held many an eye captive sank and dripped, shedding tears of amber and cerulean. Positive space collided with the negative, and the image that had once rested there looked at the boy in pain and desperation as she burned. But then, she too was gone, taken by the hungry inferno and lost to who knows where.

The boy scrunched his eyes shut. He didn't want this to be real, didn't want it to be true. But there it was in front of him, the flames and the painting within them that was almost gone and the ropes that cut into his wrists along with the cloth that gagged his mouth.

As he watched the woman's clear smile fade into a melting rage at the fact that he didn't save her, he almost cried.

Paper burning was a chemical change. They boy knew this because he had studied science with all his heart, and it wasn't like a physical change that only altered the substance and could be fixed. He knew what such a term meant. He practically envisioned the textbook page, one finger tracing under the faded ink and outlining the importance of the phrase, the other propping up the faded, green cardboard cover.

_A chemical change is any process in which one or more substances are changed into one or more different substances._

Changed. Forever.

Something hopelessly damaged like a city ravaged by storm. Something that, whether with purpose or without, was permanently broken beyond repair.

The idea too daunting to prosper, he mulled the words over slowly, trying to figure them out. They rolled around capriciously, curving and twisting black sludge thrown at a wall and splattered everywhere, dripping down in tangles of grime.

Permanently broken. A change that could never be undone.

Just like his heart.


End file.
